Read Officer in Pursuit Online

Authors: Ranae Rose

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Romantic Suspense, #Mystery & Suspense, #Suspense

Officer in Pursuit (6 page)

BOOK: Officer in Pursuit
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“It came on suddenly. Look, I’m sorry
– I should’ve explained. I feel like I gave you the cold
shoulder.”

“It’s all right. How are you feeling
now?”

“What?” She sounded
surprised.

“How are you feeling?”

“Oh. I feel okay. I’m getting ready to
go to my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class. What are you up to?”

He glanced back at his broken weights.
“Cussing up a storm. My adjustable weights broke and I don’t have
anyone here to spot me. I can’t work out.”

“That sucks.”

Her words warmed some part of him.
Most women – hell, most people – wouldn’t understand why it was so
important to him. Over the years, his fitness routine had become a
vital part of his life. Without a healthy workout, he felt off
physically and mentally.

“Yeah. Guess I’ll either have to get
new ones or join a gym.”

“You could try jiu-jitsu.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s a much harder workout than you’d
think. And where I go, the first week of classes is
free.”

“Really?” The wheels were turning so
fast inside his head he was almost dizzy.

“Uh-huh.”

“And you said you’re getting ready to
go?”

“Class starts in 40 minutes, then
there’s open mat after that. If you want to try it, you should show
up a few minutes early to sign waivers.”

He felt a surge of energy, the kind
that no amount of exercise would expel. His evening had gone from
shit to holy shit in .5 seconds. He could hardly believe
it.

“I’ll be there. Just give me the
address.”

CHAPTER 4

 

 

One of the main tenets of jiu-jitsu
was supposed to be that a smaller, physically weaker person could
overpower a larger opponent. In other words: size doesn’t matter.
Kerry had always thought that was a very male thing to
say.

Of course, she was biased: at 5’2” and
112 pounds, she was literally the smallest person on the mats. It
was completely possible to overpower a larger person with skill and
technique, but since she’d only started BJJ a year ago, her skills
were sparse. Every roll demanded every bit of what little skill she
had, even when she was working with the other women.

There were two of them there today:
Cora and Shelly. At the moment, Cora was pinning Kerry’s arm into a
kimura. Still, Kerry snuck a glance across the mats, to where Grey
was rolling with a relatively new guy.

Grey had no real training, but the
other guy didn’t have much either. And Grey had the advantage of
size: he was tall, muscular, probably pushing 200, if Kerry had to
guess.

And he looked really hot in the
compression shirt he’d worn, one that clung to his muscles like a
wet t-shirt. It was a gi day, but it was hard not to appreciate the
fact that Grey didn’t own one.

Kerry tapped as Cora finished the
kimura.

“Nice job,” she said, halfway in a
daze as she sat up on the mat, smoothing her gi jacket. She still
couldn’t believe she’d invited Grey to jiu-jitsu. The invitation
had sort of just slipped out over the phone. Now, here they
were.

She could feel him sneaking occasional
glances at her, though she pretended not to notice.

“Thanks.” Cora popped her mouthguard
out and grinned. “I’ve been practicing that for weeks. Shelly’s
been helping me.”

They started again – there were still
two minutes left on the timer that dictated how long their rounds
went.

Two minutes – it shouldn’t be hard to
keep her head in the match for that long.

But it was. She had to resist the urge
to see what Grey was doing, whether he was looking her
way.

It was stupid, especially considering
that—

“Damn it!” A familiar voice
followed a sickening
thunk
, and Kerry’s heart skipped a
beat.

She and Cora rolled to a stop. So did
several other people. An unusual stillness swept across the mats as
people stared at Grey and the other new guy.

“Oh, no.” Kerry’s stomach tied itself
in knots. Grey was covered in sweat and blood. The sight sent a
bolt of guilt tearing through her like a barbed arrow.

The wound seemed to be located at his
temple. Blood trickled down his cheek, and he cupped a hand at his
jaw to catch it. It’d already dripped onto the blue tatami
mats.

Kerry hurried back to the bathroom and
grabbed a roll of paper towels off a shelf. This was her fault:
she’d invited Grey and now he’d gotten injured. He’d probably shown
up because of his interest in her, not jiu-jitsu. As she hurried to
clean up the worst of the blood, she felt like some kind of con
artist.

Why hadn’t she just apologized and
then gotten off the phone?

“What happened?” she asked, kneeling
on the mats beside Grey. She handed him a few paper towels, which
he pressed to his head.

He frowned. “Some other guys rolled
into us by mistake. Got a nice face full of foot and hit my head on
that.” He pointed toward the edge of the mat, where a narrow wooden
border no higher than the mat itself held everything in
place.

“Sorry, man.” A tall guy who’d been a
regular long before Kerry had started BJJ stood and offered Grey a
hand. “Didn’t see you.”

Grey accepted the assistance and
stood, knuckles flecked red against the bloody wad of paper towels
he held against his temple. “It’s all right.”

Except it wasn’t. It was normal for
head wounds to bleed a lot, but still – Kerry got the creeping
feeling Grey would need stitches.

“Come on,” she said, laying a hand on
Grey’s arm, “I’ll drive you to the emergency room.”

“No need,” Grey said. “It’s just a
little cut.”

“Let me see.”

“Let me get off the mats.”

Everyone had stopped moving and was
staring at the mini train wreck that was Grey’s injury.

“I’ll get this.” An instructor
appeared, and he didn’t look happy. He sprayed disinfectant
liberally where Grey had bled on the mat. “He’s your boyfriend,
right? Go get him checked out. Might need stitches, or have a
concussion.”

Heat flared in Kerry’s cheeks, and it
didn’t have anything to do with her recent roll with Cora. She
mumbled something about driving him to the hospital and
half-dragged Grey off the mats. She took a minute to change as
quickly as she could back into shorts and a t-shirt, stuffing her
sweaty gi into her gym bag.

Afterward, Grey didn’t want to go to
the emergency room. Kerry managed to get him as far as the parking
lot.

“Don’t make me use my jiu-jitsu to get
you into the car.” It was an empty threat, but she didn’t have any
good serious ones – not for someone his size.

“Ha.” He dropped the hand he held the
wadded-up paper towels in, and blood trickled down his cheek again.
“Go ahead. You can use your jiu-jitsu on me anytime.”

She pointed at her car’s side mirror.
“Look at yourself. You’re bleeding everywhere.”

He bent down and squinted at his
reflection in the passenger-side window. “It probably looks worse
than it is.”

“Then why do you look
sick?”

“Because I feel like
puking.”

“Afraid of blood?”

“No. But you have no idea how many
tacos I ate today in Wilmington after I went to that fancy dress
store.”

“What?”

“A lot. I ate a lot of tacos.” His
suntanned face had taken on an unnatural whitish-green tint that
made Kerry’s stomach churn.

She unlocked her car and opened the
passenger-side door for him. “Get in. I think the instructor was
right – you might have a concussion.”

He groaned. “God, I ate so many
tacos.”

Finally, he sank into the
seat.

Kerry closed and locked the door
before he could think twice and hurried around to the driver’s
side. As she turned the key in the ignition, the instructor that’d
sprayed down the mats appeared by her window.

She rolled it down to talk to
him.

“He all right?”

“He’s feeling sick. I’m going to take
him to the hospital.”

“Call me and let me know how he makes
out.”

“Okay.”

She left the academy – housed in a
former warehouse on the outskirts of Cypress – behind and drove for
the hospital. It didn’t take long to get there, but neither did
getting anywhere in such a small town.

Once they were parked close to the
emergency room entrance, she walked inside with Grey. He was
uncharacteristically silent, and still looked a little
green.

Probably not from the
tacos.

Kerry filled out his paperwork for him
while he sat looking grim in one of the waiting room chairs. He was
still wearing the rash guard and board shorts he’d worn to
jiu-jitsu.

While they waited, Kerry had plenty of
time to feel increasingly guilty. Sure, accidents and injuries
happened with contact sports. But most people who participated knew
that and chanced it because they loved the sport. Grey, on the
other hand, probably couldn’t have cared less about
jiu-jitsu.

“Sorry about dragging you into this,”
she said.

“Huh?”

“Jiu-jitsu. If I hadn’t asked you to
come, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

“I’m not mad. Don’t get all
guilt-ridden on me. I wanted to go.”

She bit her tongue before she could
say something ridiculously egotistical-sounding, like: ‘Yeah, but
only because I’d be there’.

“Do you want me to wait here or come
back with you?” she asked when a nurse announced that it was his
turn.

“Up to you.”

She went with him. With all the talk
about dresses and tacos, he seemed a little confused, and the
doctor would need to hear exactly what had happened.

They made it about five steps down the
hall before Grey threw up all over the tile.

From the looks of things, he hadn’t
been lying about the tacos.

 

* * * * *

 

“Things you’ll want to watch carefully
for include seizures, mood swings, confusion, slurred speech, a
worsening headache…” The ER doctor ran down a long list of
symptoms, and Kerry tried hard to commit them all to memory. “Keep
a sharp eye on him for the next 24 hours. Do you have work
tomorrow?”

Kerry’s reply got stuck in her throat.
She struggled to clear it so she could squeak out an explanation.
She felt vaguely faint after watching Grey get four stitches – it’d
been the anesthetic needle that’d freaked her out, not the actual
suturing – and the implication that she and Grey were together
added to her nervousness. “Yes, and even if I didn’t, we don’t live
together. We’re just friends.”

Something about saying the phrase
‘just friends’ made her feel juvenile, though it was the truth,
plain and simple.

“Oh. I thought you were a couple.” The
doctor frowned. “Well, he should have a friend stay with him
overnight, or vice versa.”

Kerry turned to Grey, who sat on an
exam table, towering over her and the doctor, who’d sunk down onto
a stool. “I could call Liam and Henry, see if either one of them is
available.”

“I happen to know they’re both very
busy tonight,” Grey said, with an eye roll Kerry didn’t really
understand. “They’ve both got work tomorrow anyway. Don’t bother –
I’ll be fine.”

“If you don’t have anyone who can stay
with you,” the doctor said, “we should admit you for overnight
observation. So—”

“It’s just a bump on the head. I don’t
want to stay overnight for that.”

Out in the hall, a custodian had
arrived with a huge cart of cleaning supplies, no doubt to attend
to what remained of Grey’s taco lunch.

“He’s right – he shouldn’t have to
stay the night here,” she hurried to say, sensing a battle of wills
between Grey and the doctor. “Grey, you can stay at my place for
the night.”

Several seconds of deep silence were
punctuated by the faint, squeaking noise of a mop against
tile.

“Great,” the doctor said. “Problem
solved.”

It took Grey longer to reply, but when
he did, his voice echoed through the exam room and out into the
hall. “Really?”

“I got you into this situation,” she
replied. “The least I can do is keep an eye on you until things
settle down. It’s no big deal.”

It
felt
like a big deal though. No one
else had ever spent the night at her little two-bedroom rental. Not
that she’d expected anyone to – in fact, she’d converted the second
bedroom into a little yoga studio.

“Thanks,” he said, his gaze locking
with hers. His eyes looked clearer than they had since the disaster
at jiu-jitsu. “It would’ve sucked to spend the night
here.”

Her smile was genuine, even if she was
tingling all over with a weird combination of nerves and completely
inappropriate giddiness. The realization left her vaguely
embarrassed, but the idea of Grey spending the night at her place
was strangely exciting, no matter what the
circumstances.

BOOK: Officer in Pursuit
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ads

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